> 2533274919463107;1:
> - reinforces the plausibility and existence of slip space travel and the Slipstream itself in reality and by extension within the Halo Universe.
> - this is an influential and significant discovery and source Tobias Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa utilized to figure out how to create the Shaw-Fujikawa slipspace engine and travel in the Slipstream by the end of the 23rd Century that began the Space-Time Revolution in the 24th Century.
> - reinforces how the Slip stream works in theory, and supports the theories of Slip space travel.
No, no, and no.
> 2533274810945725;2:
> but I assumed the only thing they would be good for is the artificial gravity on the ships.
Also, no.
It’s important to understand that gravitational waves are nothing more than a confirmation of a theory of which has been known for a hundred years. Gravitational waves are one of the predictions of Einstein’s general relativity. Their derivation of gravitational waves from the equations of general relativity is done on any university course on general relativity, so in this way, they are a really well known feature of general relativity. If general relativity is right, then gravitational waves also must exist. And even before we finally managed to observe gravitational waves, a plethora of experimental confirmations of things predicted by general relativity had already been achieved. In this sense, I wouldn’t call this as much a “discovery” as I would call it a “confirmation”.
The existence of gravitational waves doesn’t really directly offer anything new theoretically. Faster than light travel is still as improbable as it was a month ago, so is anti-gravity, or any control of space-time for that matter. The confirmation of gravitational waves simply supports the validity of general relativity, and makes all its unconfirmed predictions more valid, but that’s all it does.
Slipspace in Halo is an extension of the normal four-dimensional space-time to include a bunch of extra dimensions. This is the theory of slipsapce in Halo, and while some physical theories have hypothesized the existence of extra dimensions (the idea of slipspace was taken from these theories), but general relativity is not one of them. General relativity only deals with the usual three space dimensions plus one time dimension. So, whatever happens in general relativity has no relation to the possibility of something like slipspace.
When it comes to what Astrogenesis said about artificial gravity. This doesn’t really have anything to do with gravitational waves directly either. However, unlike the idea of slipspace, artificial gravity is at least related to general relativity. But while being able to measure gravitational waves offer a possibility of getting information about events we haven’t been able to observe in the past (like the dynamics of black hole collisions), it doesn’t bring us any closer to being able to control time and space.
To create gravity, you need energy (or mass). You need massive amounts of energy. For example, suppose you were to make a one meter thick plate on which you wanted a gravity corresponding to that of the Earth. You’d need 23 million tonnes of matter per cubic meter to succeed at this. The only way possible to create gravity is to concentrate enough energy somewhere, and make sure it stays there, which is the easiest to do with matter. But gravity is so weak that the amount of mass is enormous, which makes any sort of artificial gravity impractical. Not to mention that there’s no way to shield something from gravity. In other words, if you wanted to have a ship that has gravity corresponding to that of the Earth at least somewhere (it’d actually be impossible to have it everywhere) the ship would also be pulling every object in the vicinity towards it.
To be perfectly honest, I’m probably less excited about gravitational waves than I should be. But if there’s any reason to be excited about their confirmation, what is it? Well, the effect is really small, and the ingenuity required to measure something so insignificant is amazing. The measurement in itself tells more about our technical ability than anything. Secondly, I guess in the future it could allow a new way to probe events such as black hole collisions in the universe. These are maybe more mundane than the idea of FTL travel, probably not as exciting, but that’s the reality of science.
If there’s anything you want clarified about gravitational waves, I’d be happy to explain. Although I’m not as excited about this confirmation as I should be, I can say that from a theoretical point of view, gravitational waves are definitely an interesting phenomenon.
